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Previously on War2|BLAWG…

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Category: Cubs

NOTE: I wrote this 10 minutes after the last out of the 2015 NLCS. I was drunk. Sobriety and watching the Mets get worked in the World Series has tempered my dire attitude. That said, I hate to write something and then never let it see the light of day, because I’m a narcissist who, like the streaker Dick Butkus once almost killed at the 50-yard line, is ever eager to show off his shortcomings. What follows are the rantings of a crazy man and also a half dozen beers and a glass of Scotch.

I didn’t have the heart to watch it, as it ended. I knew the score before it came up. The Cubs lost, and that was enough. I didn’t need to know how.

Technology is a funny thing. I didn’t want cable, so I bought Dish Sling for a month so I could watch the playoffs. But Sling sucks, and lags 30 seconds or more behind “live.” So I used my phone to track the score, the outs, the game, and then would patiently wait for the result to show up on the screen. So I knew, before it happened to me, that it was over. Technology is funny in the same way that all tragedies are funny. You laugh because you don’t want to cry.

Though, to be honest, I kind of want to cry.

Maybe I should have watched. I’d watched enough this year. I’d probably seen 80 games in their entirety, including the three amazing games against the Cardinals over my birthday weekend in Chicago. It should have been enough, and I should have had the loyalty to watch, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want it to end.

Baseball is dying. People say as much every year, when they compare the ratings to that of inferior sports, to football and its interminable pauses between mindless violence, to basketball and it’s infuriating squeaks and individual plays that mean nothing at all in the grand scheme. Oh look, what an amazing play, he just scored less than 2% of their final total, he’s an amazing athlete.

Basketball is a crock of shit.

But if baseball is dying, it’s taking me with it. I turned 40 this year, and when you turn 40 you realize some things. All your hopes, all your dreams, are dead. You’re a middle-class wage slave with a comfortable life, a life you never wanted and dreaded having. You’re past the point of having potential, and to the point that you’re ten years into a thirty year pull to the finish line, where you won’t even get a gold watch when you retire. I’ll probably die before I retire, and if I do, make sure to tell the state of California it can go fuck itself.

I have anger issues.

This season seemed different, for some reason. It wasn’t Joe Maddon. I never liked him, and I dreaded his hiring. I knew he was a great manager, that wasn’t the question. Probably one of the two or three best in the league. But I wanted a manager like Bruce Bochey, a pleasantly dopey kind of klutz that endeared himself to your heart while simultaneously making all the right calls. I didn’t want hipster grandpa. I didn’t want onesie parties and zoo animals, and I still don’t.

We had the Cy Young, the Rookie of the Year. Before he ran out of gas in October, we had a legitimate argument for a top-5 MVP. It all seemed so different.

And it is different. The Cubs will be good in 2016. They’ll probably be good in 2017 and 2018. And there’s a very good chance that they’ll be good for 9 or 10 years, in the same way the Tigers have been good since 2006, the same way the Tigers made it to two World Series and now face the real probability of a very long winter.

I’m not a religious man. I believe you turn to dirt when you die, and all the thoughts, hopes, dreams, joys, pains of your life die with you. There is no God, and if there is, he cares not for the plight of mere mortals. But there are times I question. There are times I believe. And when I do, I believe that He hates me.

I walked a mile and a half in the rain this morning, while listening to Steve Dahl’s podcast. I showed up to work a few minutes late. I said good morning to the skeleton crew that’s there on Fridays, I poured myself a cup of coffee, and finally I sat at my desk and checked the Internet. It’s rote at this point: first Gmail, then Twitter, finally the Chicago Tribune’s front page. I follow a half dozen sports reporters and a couple of Cubs bloggers on Twitter. The first post I read was from Andy Dolan of Desipio.com: “So long, big boy.”

Anyone that ever listened to a Cubs radio broadcast knew what that meant.

I clicked through to his post. “The toughest man to ever play for the Chicago Cubs is gone.” I went to the Tribune. “Ron Santo: Dead at 70.” It took a couple seconds to sink in, but when it did, I started to tear up. Continue reading Ron Santo: 1940-2010